The Yuri Drabble Zone
by A New Username
Summary: A collection of drabbles and one-shots centered around various SAO yuri pairings and even more various AUs. Ratings will range from K-T, genres can be anything I think to write, and pairings are up for suggestion but must be yuri.
1. Mismatched Feelings (femKiriYuuki)

**Author's Note**

 **Hey there, bet you weren't expecting something like this from me! I'm usually the type to only write stuff in a multi-chapter format, but this is clearly a one-shot/drabble collection. To be perfectly frank, I'm just as surprised as my followers probably are here.**

 **Yeah, so I've been doing one-shots more often lately. And I've been getting more and more ideas for them, too. So I thought I'd create a little dumping ground for all of my SAO yuri one-shots and drabbles and the like. That's what this story is. Every installment will be self-contained, and they will all be unrelated to every other installment unless otherwise specified in the title. Most of them will be at least two thousand words, but some will be in the 1-2k range, I'm sure. Nothing will go below that, though.**

 **Though every single one will be yuri, the pairings will be subject to my whims. This first story, for example, is female Kirito/Yuuki. The next one will probably be female Kirito/Sinon. And I have plans for a few Asuna/Yuuki ones, too. Basically, I'm just doing whatever pairings I can get ideas from, though if you have a pairing suggestion, be sure to leave it in a review and I might get to it eventually.**

 **Worth noting is that every one-shot/drabble in this entire collection will be an AU of some variety. You will not find any canon universe fics here, sorry. Chances are in the great majority of them, VRMMOs will not even exist. So if you're looking for stuff in the normal SAO-verse, look elsewhere because you won't find it here.**

 **Without further ado, time to read!**

* * *

The Yuri Drabble Zone

Story One: Mismatched Feelings

I knew it was unreasonable to expect anything else of her at this point, but right at that moment, I was deeply annoyed at how increasingly late my best friend was becoming. We had agreed to meet at the mall at ten in the morning, and thirty minutes had already passed since then. And yet still, there was no sign of my bouncy, cheerful, borderline ADHD childhood friend.

Her being late was an every day occurrence, so normally, I was accustomed to dealing with it. But today, we were supposed to see a new movie together, one that would be starting at eleven. We had planned to get together for brunch, then go see the movie after that, but with how long she was taking, I got the feeling we'd just have to settle for snacks at the theater instead. Which could easily end up being significantly more expensive for a lot less food.

And more than that, I had set up this get together, chosen this particular movie, for a very specific purpose. Something I wanted to express to her, to get across before it was too late and the damage was irreversible. But if she arrived too late for us to get into the film showing, that would significantly throw off my whole plan. My only hope was that she'd arrive at the meeting spot soon so we could at least get there on time.

For a moment, I pulled up the sleeve of my black denim jacket in order to check my watch again for probably the third time in the past ten minutes. But just before I got a good look, my field of vision went dark as two cold somethings covered up my eyes.

"Guess who?" this call rang out right by my right ear, and I could feel the words as much as I heard them.

Other than what I was sure was a subtle reddening of my cheeks at the contact and breath on my ear, I gave no outward reaction to having been snuck up on. I merely used both of my gloved hands to grab the ones hovering over my eyes, then pulled them down, turned around without letting go of them, and gave the person behind me a cold stare.

"You're late. What happened this time?"

The girl whose hands I was still holding onto was rather short for the fifteen-year-old girl she was. She had comparatively shorter brown hair, kept that length for sports, that was so dark, it would appear black in dim enough lighting. Her baggy, unfashionable light gray sweat pants and violet hoodie made of a similar material mostly obscured her body type, but it was still possible to tell that she was very thin in all respects, including her chest. Though since starting to play basketball a year prior, she'd definitely put on some muscle compared to how she was before, as one would be able to tell if her pants and sleeves didn't cover her limbs.

All in all, she didn't look very girly, appearance-wise. Which wasn't a criticism I could make without looking hypocritical, anyway, since I myself was wearing fairly masculine clothes and zero makeup. My black jean jacket had a distinctly non-feminine style, I wore fingerless black leather gloves that even had manly little knuckle holes, and my pants were dark gray baggy denim. But in terms of my body, I definitely had the girl in front of me beat in the way of femininity. I had what I'd heard other people refer to as an hourglass figure, and my long, lustrous black hair came down to my waist. Even without makeup, my gray eyes appeared large and more expressive than any other part of my body.

All these observations were made in the single second before she began to speak.

"Well, I got really excited about the idea of seeing a movie with you, since you don't go out much anymore, and it ended up making me stay up too late and oversleep," she explained, as openly honest as usual. I wished I could be so straightforward sometimes. "And then when I woke up, I didn't have enough time to do the laundry, so these were all I had to wear that wouldn't make me die of hypothermia. I'm still kind of cold, though."

It went like this a lot. That was just how my childhood friend two years younger, Konno Yuuki, operated when it came to me. She would be strongly affected by the smallest of gestures I gave her. I was able to elicit bigger reactions from her than anyone else in her life could, even her own family, and to a degree, it had always been like that. I'd long since grown used to it.

"It's not that bad yet. It's only mid November," I retorted, but at the same time, started to do something to fix her complaint.

"K-Kimiko… what are… you…" with each pause in her sentence, her face got redder and redder.

I smirked smugly at this reaction, which I would never outwardly admit, I found pretty cute. "You said you were cold, so I'm just warming you up a little. No big deal, right?"

What I was doing was basically just messing with her hands. Rubbing her palms with my thumbs, entwining and untwining our fingers, that sort of thing. There weren't a whole lot of people around this area of the mall right now, since our meeting spot was basically a back entrance that not many people knew existed, so I didn't really have to worry about anybody else seeing us and judging what probably looked like a couple's activity.

And I could easily tell that my strategy to warm her up was working. Her hands were getting hot and sweaty, and she had a fierce blush on her face. I was fixing her cold problem and getting a solid tease in at the same time. Side objective complete, for now at least. All that was left was to wait for direct confirmation.

"Y-you can stop now," she requested after another few seconds. "I'm not cold anymore."

I nodded my head, letting go of one of her hands, but keeping her right entwined with my left. "Gotcha. Then let's head to the theater. There's not enough time to get brunch, and if we get there soon, we'll be able to watch the previews, too."

"Okay…" her affirmative was somewhat subdued. She still seemed pretty embarrassed by what had just transpired.

Seeing that only made me that much more motivated to go through with this and put an end to this miserable situation once and for all.

* * *

They ended up getting seats one away from the back row, in the middle. I chose them because I wanted to be able to watch both the movie and my childhood friend's reaction to it without people looking and wondering why my attention was split between the two. Considering the only row behind us was, quite literally, the make out row, and there weren't people right next to us on either side (the theater wasn't often very crowded before four in the afternoon), I more or less accomplished my objective in choosing these seats.

Yuuki herself had been positively glued to the screen for the whole movie so far. Which made sense, considering this was her first time seeing it. I myself had already seen it once before, with my sister, who had taken me specifically to prove a point to me.

That point being, rather bluntly, that I really needed to do something about my relationship with my childhood friend. You may be wondering how taking me to a movie would drive such a point home. The answer was pretty simple.

The two main protagonists of this film were, in a lot of ways, very similar to me and Yuuki. They were childhood friends, like us, and while they didn't exactly look very similar, they did have personalities like ours. And for that matter, they were also both girls, like us.

The movie's plot was a fairly standard romantic drama, though interestingly, it was one of the first Japanese lesbian romance films I'd ever seen hit theaters. Basically, the two childhood friends fell in love with each other, but they didn't really love each other the same amount. One loved the other far more than that other loved her. This led to their eventual relationship being very unstable, to say the least.

The current scene was a big fight between the protagonists, who had thus far been a couple for about a month in the story. However, the one who didn't love the other as much had been cheating on her, and it had finally come out into the open. At the end of the scene, they would break up until the end of the film, where they'd get back together again with a more mutual love.

Frankly, I felt the ending was contrived and unrealistic. In real life, there wouldn't necessarily be a happy ending to this story – they wouldn't have gotten back together again, or if they did, the relationship would probably fail again for a multitude of reasons. Real life was a fair bit darker and sadder than people's lives in movies like these, most of the time.

And that was the whole point, frankly, of me taking Yuuki to this movie in the first place. For a long time, I'd been aware of the existence of _that_. Of her feelings for me, and of mine for her. But there was no way that we could ever work as a couple. Why, you ask?

Because, much like the protagonists of the movie, we didn't love each other the same amount. While we definitely both had romantic feelings for one another, she loved me far more than I did her. That was why an intimate relationship between us would be destined to fail.

That was what I wanted to get across to her today by taking her to this movie and talking to her about it afterwards. I wanted to do it for her own good, so she could move on from me and find someone who would actually love her back as much as she deserved.

This would be better for both of us. I knew that for certain. So that was why it sucked so damn much that even though I knew this was the best course of action, the idea of going through with it still left me feeling so hollow inside.

* * *

After the movie ended, we decided to go back to her house for the day. It was already the middle of the afternoon, but I don't think either of us wanted to part just yet. We didn't talk a whole lot during the trip back, nor did either of us say much while making our way to her room for some privacy (her entire family was home, since it was a Saturday). But then, right after she closed the door behind us, I spoke up.

"So, what were your thoughts on the movie?"

To be honest, I already had a pretty good idea of what she thought of it. I had sort of been watching her to gauge her reactions for about a fourth of the film's total length at least. But you could only tell so much about reactions from the face alone. So I had to ask in order to start the conversation I wanted to have.

"It was really good, actually," she replied, nodding her head at her own words. "Though for some reason, the main character – the long-haired one, I mean – really reminded me of myself."

"Really now?" I asked, though I actually knew full well why she would see a resemblance.

The one who reminded Yuuki of herself was the one who loved the other main protagonist more than that girl loved her back. Or rather, she was hopelessly head over heels for her. Which would be a good way of describing how my childhood friend felt about me, as far as I could tell.

"Yeah, although I can't really explain it well," my friend said with another nod. Well, more like she didn't want to explain why to me, probably. "But anyway, I'm really glad they got back together in the end. What about you?"

"Personally, I thought the ending felt forced. Didn't seem really realistic to me," I admitted, looking over at the window to my left to avoid seeing her reaction to my reply. "In real life… I don't think it would have ended nearly so well."

"Somehow, your eyes are telling me that there's some sort of deeper meaning here. But I can't tell what it is," she caught what I had both been expecting and hoping she would catch.

"There is a deeper meaning, yeah," I acknowledged. Here was where things got hard. "It's… it's about us."

"Huh? About us?"

I gulped reflexively. It was getting harder and harder to say what I knew needed to be said. "Yeah. I…"

My voice lost its strength when I needed it the most. For the first time, I realized that I might not be able to go through with this. Because even if my feelings didn't go as far as hers did… I still loved her. And I didn't want to lose her, even if I knew she shouldn't be so fixated on me.

But this had to happen sooner or later. The longer this issue was ignored, the worse it would become when it had to be taken care of. I had to get her to move on, for both of our sakes. So I took a deep breath, exhaled, and forced the words out.

"I know you're in love with me. Like the long-haired girl in that movie was in love with her childhood friend."

There, I said it. First and second objectives cleared. Just a few more to go. I just had to gather the courage to say them. But before I could, Yuuki's voice cut in. Apparently, she had drawn her own conclusions based on what I'd said so far.

"Then… was showing me the movie your way of rejecting me? Of telling me you don't love me back?" That was the conclusion she'd reached. In my head, I laughed bitterly, because I wished it were that simple.

It would have been so much easier if I could have just lied. Told her yes to both of those things. But I couldn't do that. She deserved to know the full truth. So I took another deep breath, and with a great sigh, spoke again.

"Yes and no. I am rejecting you, but not because I don't love you," I said, by some finding it easier to say what I needed to this time. "I do love you, and I don't mean just as a friend. But… it's not anywhere near as much as you love me."

I was almost done here. Just a bit more, and I'd leave, and she'd be able to start the process of moving on. She could finally find someone who would love her back just as much. This needed to be done—

My thoughts were cut off when, out of nowhere, Yuuki closed the distance between us and wrapped me in a fierce embrace. I turned back to face her in order to tell her to stop, but before I could, her voice, loud, clear and kind of unstable, whispered into my ear.

"You useless idiot. Rejecting someone doesn't work if what you say right after only makes it harder for them to give up on you," she scolded, her tone kind of shaky. It sounded like she was about to cry.

"I never claimed to be good at things like these…" I said it without really thinking too much about it.

She spoke right into my ear again, and I had to fight off a shiver from the feeling. "Hey. How long do you think I've been in love with you for?"

That was a good, albeit unexpected, question. I hadn't exactly traced it back a whole lot since realizing it, so I didn't have a definite answer off the top of my head. I took a few seconds to think about it, then gave a rough estimate.

"Um, three years?" It seemed like a pretty recent development. At the very least, it wasn't one of those cheesy 'I've loved you since we first met' type deals. We were childhood friends, we'd known each other since before we could feel that kind of love.

"Close. It's been four as of last month," she replied, her voice sounding much more stable by that point. "And through all of them since I realized it myself, I never once thought of confessing. Because I never once thought that you felt the same, even a little bit."

What… what was she trying to say here? What was she trying to do? I asked these questions in my head even though I knew there was no point. She was probably going to make that clear real soon anyway.

"So what if you don't love me as much as I love you? The fact that you return any of my feelings at all is enough to make me happy! That's more than I thought I'd ever get already!" by the end of it, she was shouting. And to be honest, it really hurt my ears, but I didn't say anything for fear of ruining the moment.

I could feel my resistance crumbling into dust, leaving only uncertainty in its wake. I hadn't prepared for this at all. I had no idea how to deal with it. What the hell was I supposed to do now that it had progressed to this point?

"Since I know how you feel, I can't just say okay to being rejected. So instead, let's do this for now," Yuuki continued, suddenly speaking in a softer, far more pleasant tone to hear so close. "Try going out with me for a while. Find out how it would actually work out for yourself. See if you can fall in love with me more than you are now. Okay?"

In that last word, when she asked for my confirmation, I could sense all the uncertainties underneath the surface of what had been nothing but confidence before it. I could hear the worry that even after all the attempts to convince me, I'd be as stubborn as usual and refuse.

"I…"

Damn it, how could I say no to that, anyway? I knew I wasn't exactly one to talk, but she really wasn't playing fair here, saying all that while hugging me so damn close. This would have been hard to refuse even if she were halfway across the room, but like this… it was just impossible.

Wait a second, weren't the arms wrapped around her really tight? It felt like she was being squeezed. She was… really nervous about my answer, wasn't she? Or perhaps even scared. In which case, I really had to hurry up.

I wrapped my arms loosely around her slim frame, returning the hug. "Okay. You win, I'll try it."

At that precise moment, right as Yuuki's arms tightened even more in response, I became aware of the presence of someone else very close by. The bedroom door was cracked open, and through the small opening, I saw a single eye staring at the both of us. A very familiar eye, at that.

"Aiko, don't eavesdrop on us," I called out the owner of the eye, my gaze hardening into a glare.

Following my calling out our spy, my lover of five seconds and counting rapidly disengaged from me and turned around to face her older sister. "Sis, what the hell?!"

"What kind of self respecting older sibling would I be if I didn't get worried after overhearing this kind of conversation? I was worried!" said sister asked us, opening the door a little further and crossing her arms defiantly. "But it turns out I didn't need to. Since Kimiko made the right choice, which means you two finally hooked up."

It felt like she was indirectly implying that if I had still gone through with my planned rejection, she would have made me pay for it dearly. Which, if I were to be frank, made her seem more like an overprotective older brother than a big sister.

"Well, I'm gonna go back to my room before Yuuki throws her alarm clock at me. I'm going to assume that Kimiko will be here for a while… but please be sure not to make too much noise tonight, all right?" Aiko told us the most annoying thing she possibly could before turning around to leave.

Faced with such an implication, I could only blush profusely and put my head in my hands. Yuuki, on the other hand, yelled something about how her sister shouldn't poke her nose into our business before shutting the door in a huff.

Later that night, for the sole purpose of messing with Aiko, my new lover and I played together on her old PS4 with the TV's volume turned all the way up.

* * *

 **Author's Note**

 **Honestly, this one turned out drastically different from my initial vision of it. It's barely even recognizable from how I imagined it up. It became way more dramatic than I initially wanted it to. And way more melodramatic, too. I basically added the bit with Aiko in as a method of lightening the mood because damn, I didn't know how I was going to wrap it up otherwise.**

 **This one was pretty original, I think. I didn't exactly get the idea from anything that already existed that I know of. A lot of other fics in this collection will be based off of doujins I've read and liked, but this one wasn't. It was kind of weird.**

 **Anyway, questions, comments, concerns? Reviews? Ones that don't just tell me it was good and say to update soon? Please share them if you have any to give.**

 **See you next time! The next one-shot I'm thinking of writing is a Kiriko/Sinon drabble (so it'll be shorter than this) that will be titled, "Three Seconds", based off a doujin of the same name.**


	2. Confession (femKiriSachi)

**Author's Note**

 **This chapter was completed a long time ago. It was supposed to be edited by my editor, ForteDragon, but that didn't work out, so I'm releasing it as is.**

 **This story is based a doujin I saw on Dynasty Reader for Love Live! Sunshine!, which I believe was Riko x You. It then evolved into me deciding to try and make a generic cliche story concept (the confession scene) as enjoyable to read as possible. That's what this is about.**

 **The pairing is Kiriko x Sachi, by the way. They seemed to be the best fit for emulating the characters who starred in the doujin I based the story off of.**

 **Go ahead and read so you can tell me how I did.**

* * *

The Yuri Drabble Zone

Story Two: Confession

* * *

"That was… really exhausting…"

These words sounded out in a weak, soft female voice from the lips of the person walking beside me in the deserted school hallway. Out of our entire club, we were the only ones who left school in this particular direction, so we always ended up going home together. We'd lived in the same neighborhood all our lives, and we'd been friends for as far back as I could remember, so this was nothing new.

The reason her voice trailed off in the middle wasn't physical exhaustion – we were heading home from the computer research club, so it's not like we were doing any exercise there. The trail off and cause of the exhaustion she mentioned probably had a lot to do with the conversation I'd effectively bailed her out of before she passed out from the stress.

 _Well, that's probably an exaggeration… now, anyway. I don't think she still loses consciousness from stress at this point…_

"They were grilling you pretty hard, weren't they?" I replied, squeezing the hand I'd grabbed to lead her out of that situation. "You can't even handle being the center of attention, let alone that plus being asked a personal question like that by everyone. Sorry for not intervening sooner."

Her hand squeezed mine in turn. "It's okay. You still rescued me, so you don't have to feel guilty."

Except hearing that only made my guilt worse. Yes, I had helped her escape the situation before she reached the breaking point, but only after waiting until the last possible second. The topic of conversation was something I really wanted to hear her answer for, probably more so than any of the people who kept incessantly asking her about it.

"Yeah… still, those two are really something, aren't they?" I commented on the people who'd indirectly started the topic I'd had to bail my best friend out of. "Half of me kind of expected this development, but still…"

It was a actually a blatant omission of the fine print to say that I only partially expected the event I referenced to happen. I actually went out of my way to make it happen from both sides – as the founder of the girls only branch of the computer club, and the one who was responsible for the two people in question meeting in the first place, I felt wholly responsible for the way their feelings for each other had developed. And because neither of them were acting on them, I took several steps with both of them to help them reach for a happiness that neither of them felt was worth the risk at first.

But the girl holding my hand as we walked through the school halls had no idea about my involvement. That was the whole point of me making commentary about it in such a tone – I wanted to get her to tell me her own thoughts about it and think it was her idea to say it. It was an awfully contrived tactic, and one that could easily backfire with anyone else… but it was the easiest way to breach the next subject I wanted to get her to talk to me about.

And as I'd expected, it worked like a charm. "I think it's admirable, though… they're both girls. Think about the courage it must have taken, you know?"

"That's true. Asuna's family is pretty strict and old-fashioned in general…" I pointed out, nodding my head as if thinking about this for the first time and realizing how hard it must have been. "I get the feeling that even though their feelings were mutual, it must have been hard for her to accept Yuuki's confession for fear of how her mother would react."

I got that feeling because my chestnut-haired friend herself had told me that she didn't have the courage to betray her mother's expectations when I'd breached the subject of love between girls with her a few weeks prior. I'd had to more or less recondition her to think that her own happiness mattered more than her mother's expectations in a single conversation. It hadn't gone very well at first, but I managed to convince her to at least give it a chance in the end.

"I think it took even more courage for Yuuki to confess. She knew about Asuna's family's view of same sex love, so she knew her odds of her feelings being received well or even neutrally were small… but she still took the chance," my childhood friend played right into my hand, as usual.

I'd specifically mentioned Asuna's perspective in order to get her to comment on the other side of things. I'd played just as significant a role in getting our sickly friend to confess. Essentially, I told her that I'd given her a golden opportunity through convincing the object of her affections to be a bit more open-minded and she had a few days tops to take advantage of it or she'd lose her chance because the heiress would convince herself that I was wrong and I wouldn't be able to undo it. I knew how hard it was for both sides of them to do what they did, because I'd been the person to convince them both to go against their instincts and give it a shot.

But in order for me to achieve my true goal in this conversation, I couldn't let on the role I'd had. I needed to pretend to have an outsider's perspective in order to get the answer I hadn't been able to find out in the clubroom before needing to help my friend escape the stress. I effectively wanted to know the same thing all our other friends did – I was just going about getting the information in a safe, subtle, roundabout way.

"Fair point. I certainly admire that," I replied, nodding my head again. "The resolve it takes to lay your heart bare to anyone, let alone the person who has the most influence on it… I respect and envy that."

 _Because I don't have it. I'm so scared of rejection that I'm resorting to these kinds of tactics in order to figure out who my best friend loves before even considering the possibility of confessing._

Now I just had to wait. If she was able to tell anyone who it was that she loved under any circumstances, she would tell me now, especially after all the setting up I just went through the process of doing. I'd created the optimal environment for her to do this, so all I could do was hope she trusted me enough to say it.

"K-Kimiko… um…"

 _There it goes. Brace for impact._

I'd gone through all the trouble to provoke this response, but I was still in love with her. Just because I brought this upon myself wouldn't make it any less painful to hear who she loved… I almost didn't notice that both of us had instinctively stopped walking forward after she started speaking.

I turned back to face her and let go of her hand as I took a good look at her face. She was a bit more flushed than I'd been expecting – I had anticipated a mild blush, but it seemed like her entire face had been set ablaze, contrasting the dark blue dye in her hair and her clover-colored eyes quite beautifully.

"I…" she trailed off again, as if every new word she uttered required more and more effort. "Love…"

 _The phrasing is a bit off here… it's almost like she's— no. Don't get your hopes up._

At this point, it sounded more like she was confessing to me than simply telling me who she loved. But that couldn't be right – we'd known each other since we were kids. In some respects, she probably knew more about me than my actual family did. She knew more of my weaknesses and faults than anyone else. There was no way she could come to love me in spite of all that—

"Y… you…"

 _Holy shit… I'm not dreaming, am I? This is really happening, right?_

A huge part of me didn't even believe that this was real. Logically and emotionally, it didn't make sense for this to be the truth. How could it be right? She knew the real me better than anyone else, so how could she actually be in love with me? But even as I doubted the reality of it, I could feel the pounding of my own heart so intensely… so it couldn't be a dream—

"… Maybe."

… _What the actual hell?! Maybe?! What the fuck is with that?!_

For a brief flicker of a moment, I came dangerously close to actually articulating some of the turmoil going on inside my head, the anger at being lead on like that, even if it wasn't on purpose. But before I exploded, I noticed something that stopped me dead in my tracks.

She was avoiding my eyes. Her face was still bright red all over. And if her wild eyes were anything to go by, she must've been absolutely terrified. This collection of traits didn't seem like those of someone who wasn't sure of themselves. It seemed like those of someone who was terrified of the possibility of a negative reaction, especially when paired with the verbal backpedaling she did.

 _I can't be completely sure, but…_

"Sachi," I called out, doing my best to keep my voice free of any emotion she could pick up on. "Why won't you look me in the eyes?"

"I-I just… I can't…" her voice was even weaker than before as she admitted this to me. "I'm sorry…"

I nodded in understanding. "Then I'll help you."

Before she even had the chance to ask what I meant, I dropped my bag and used both my hands to gently grab her face and force her to look directly at me. The redness of her face got a shade darker as she let out a startled squeal.

"Hey… let me ask you something," I told her, my voice wavering on the first word but then coming back twice as strong. "And you have to give an honest answer."

She seemed to be even more terrified than before. It looked like she had no idea what to expect. But even so, she still responded with an affirmatory, "Okay…"

I leaned in close, closer than I would have let myself get before this unexpected development. By the time I stopped, our breaths were starting to mix together. "When you say that you love me…"

I took a shallow breath and gulped in the pause I created when I trailed off. I was starting to see why she was so terrified… she'd already more or less confessed, and the possibility of letting her know how I felt myself was still nerve wracking beyond belief. And she was naturally shyer than me… it must have been so much harder for her.

 _All the more reason I have to go through with this. It's all or nothing now._

"Is it _really_ …" I forced myself to keep going, taking another shallow breath. "… only maybe?"

Just as she began to visibly react to my words, I let go of her face and took a step back. Even if I'd asked her myself, I already found myself afraid of the answer. It would be better to just pretend this whole conversation didn't happen.

"Never mind," I said, forcing a smile that didn't even feel realistic on my face. "Let's get going. If we take much longer, our train will leave without us."

 _Wow, I look like a hypocrite. I go to all that effort to help Asuna and Yuuki overcome this kind of thing, and it turns out I'm a slave to it myself._

I turned around, reaching down and grabbing my bag again. I began to slowly walk forward again, trying my damnedest to keep my composure. I'd held myself together through some really bad experiences, but I'd never been quite this emotionally involved in any of them. At least, that was what I told myself to justify the tears starting to prick at the corner of my eyes without my consent. I instinctively reached up and rubbed my eyes with my free hand before realizing how obvious that must have looked.

 _Oh shit… there's no way she didn't notice that. How am I going to explain the fact that I'm almost in fucking tears to her—_

"Wait!"

This shout, coupled with a pair of arms encircling my waist, rooted me to my spot. When I felt her chin rest on my shoulder, I completely froze up, both physically and mentally. I had no idea how to react to this gesture.

"Let me say it clearly…" she told me, her breath tickling my ear. "The train can wait."

Unable to think of anything to say, I dumbly nodded my head. This whole situation was so far outside my realm of expectation that I had no idea how to deal with any of it anymore. All I could do was wait for her to clarify what she really meant and hope that it didn't destroy me.

"I… I love you. There is no maybe," she told me, her voice somehow far stronger than it was the first time she confessed. "I was just scared… your private reaction to Asuna and Yuuki dating seemed negative, and I didn't know whether it'd be the same for my feelings. But my fearful decision seems to have hurt you… sorry."

The more she spoke, the more tears escaped through my defenses. This was the best possible thing she could have said – it but my heart completely at ease. These feelings I'd held for years on end… they actually had real value.

My throat felt sore and I knew my voice would waver, but I forced myself to speak anyway. Because even if I was crying… they were all tears of joy. "Damn it… next time, say it like that from the start, okay? _That_ was what I wanted to hear…"

Her grip tightened a little as she gave a reply that made my heart soar. "I'll remember that when I propose."

* * *

 **Author's note**

 **The main reason I didn't want to release this without editing initially was that I hated the ending. I still do, but I don't think it's so terrible that it's not worth posting the story.**

 **Anyway, how did I do? Was it a good read or a bad one? Leave a review telling me how well I pulled this off!**

 **Anyway, this isn't the only new update to the Drabble Zone I plan to do. There'll be another coming out in a few minutes, so keep your eyes peeled, guys!**

 **See you then!**


	3. Lasting Impression (femKiriPhilia)

**Author's Note**

 **Here's the next story in this double feature! This one is Kiriko x Philia, and is also a small part of a story which I plan to release at some point in the future. That story will have multiple chapters and will probably be at least ten installments long, but this version is going to be self-contained. There will be some differences between this iteration's scenes and the full story's versions, but most of them will be at the point where this one ends.**

 **Interestingly, this story takes place in a rock band AU. The main character, Philia, is the lead singer and songwriter of a popular rock band, which I have yet to come up with a name for. But you'd hardly notice any of that in this small piece because barely anything even references that part of the characters' lives up until the very end.**

 **Anyway, I'll let you read now. Shouldn't take that long to finish this, it's only got thirteen hundred words of story!**

* * *

The Yuri Drabble Zone

Story Three: Lasting Impression

* * *

Soft. Her lips were really soft. It was all I could think about as I felt them push against my own. Maybe it was the effect of the alcohol we'd snuck into my apartment, but it seemed like the entire world around me faded into nothingness as my best friend's lips hungrily, almost desperately molded themselves against mine.

It was terrifying, but also exciting. The experience gave me intense anxiety, but also thrilled me in a way I couldn't even put into words. It instilled feelings in me which I'd never felt before, ones that I'd never thought I'd feel only a short few months before this night.

My closest friend and savior's eyes were closed, her glossy black bangs almost completely covering one of them. With her face so close, I couldn't see anything else but slivers of my bedroom's beige-painted walls in the background and the unfolded black collar of her old, well-worn leather jacket.

I normally didn't notice it that much, but I could very easily smell the light perfume she always wore. The exact scent gave off the impression of both femininity and masculinity waging war on each other for supremacy, much like the sometimes self-contradictory manner in which the perfume's wearer carried herself. It was a mild, almost completely undetectable smell from a normal distance, but up close and personal like this, it was downright intoxicating.

Just as I began giving into the emotions I couldn't identify and started to melt into the kiss, my eyes beginning to close automatically… she pulled away. Just like that, the world came careening back into full focus as my eyelids snapped back open. The anxiety I had felt during the event itself suddenly magnified greatly and almost completely crushed the mix of other feelings I'd just experienced for the first time.

The person who'd put me through this emotional rollercoaster's eyes were still closed, a toothy grin completely contrary to her normal calm, collected demeanor taking up a good portion of her pale, completely flawless face. Her cheeks were tinged pink – though whether from embarrassment of her own actions or from the cans of alcoholic lemonade we'd drank together, I couldn't fathom.

"W-w-w… what was that?!" The booze acted like a speech impediment at first, but with enough concentration and effort, I managed to get the intended message across.

I could feel my own heartbeat, and it didn't feel safe – it felt way too fast to be normal. It felt so fast that the idea of a heart attack being imminent did not seem at all improbable. I didn't have a clue that anxiety could make it beat this quickly and irregularly… it was truly terror inspiring to me at the time.

"What do you think it was, Philia?" The person responsible for putting me in this state didn't seem inclined to try to make it go away. "There's only so many ways to frame what just happened."

After responding to my question remarkably coherently for someone who'd had twice as many cans of alcohol as I did, the girl sitting next to me on my blue-blanketed bed started giggling loudly, as if she'd said something hysterical. In my state of emotional turmoil, the sight and sound of it absolutely infuriated me.

"What's so damn funny?!" I emphatically spat out the curse word to accentuate the rest of my question's tone of voice. Tears began to prick at the corners of my eyes as some more of the reality of the situation caught up with my buzzed brain. "T-that was my first kiss… you stole it…"

When she noticed me starting to cry, all traces of amusement disappeared at once. Her face became almost unreadable, but in her stormy gray irises, I saw anxiety equal to or greater than what I felt… but more than that, I saw an intense fear that seemed to directly outweigh all of the emotions I felt at that exact moment. I had no idea what to make of any of this – I couldn't even make sense of my own feelings, so how could I possibly comprehend someone else's?

Despite seeming to be less emotionally stable than I was, she looked me dead in the eyes and spoke in a clear, calm, somewhat tentative voice as regret flashed through her eyes along with everything else. "Sorry. Were you… were you against it?"

I had no idea how to answer that. I could clearly remember all of the feelings that the kiss evoked, even in my somewhat drunken haze… and not all of them were bad. Some of them were even good. But others were terrifying… and I had no idea which side outweighed the other.

"I…"

* * *

A loud, continuous beeping noise slowly roused me from my night's sleep. I could still vividly remember the dream I'd had – or rather, the memory I'd relived in my slumber. As I thought back to the event itself and how it played out after that, my mind still groggy but thick with the emotions I'd been reminded of, I reached an idle hand up to the spot beside my pillow and grabbed my vibrating smartphone. I checked its lock screen to find out what alarm had woken me up that particular morning.

"Morning practice…" I read the alarm label aloud in a groggy daze. As I tapped the button to make it stop, I began to repeat the phrase I'd uttered over and over in my head, knowing that eventually it would register and I'd figure out why exactly I needed to get up at six thirty in the damn morning.

After the alarm disappeared from the lock screen and the sounds and vibration ceased, I found a text notification from one of my friends, named Sinon as far as my phone knew. It seemed to have been sent about fifteen minutes prior to my alarm going off. All it said was that Strea was skipping practice again… and that we had a meeting with our producer at ten.

I knew she didn't ask and probably didn't care, but for my sleepy mind, the most important thing in the world was the vividly accurate memory of a dream I'd just had. I swiped at the text notification and unlocked my phone before typing out a simple message.

" _I had the dream again."_

I'd touched upon this subject with everyone in our band, so I didn't need to bother describing the dream to her. She knew that if I just said "the dream," then it would be this one. It took a few seconds, but after a small wait, I noticed the little bubble telling me that she was typing out a reply. A few moments later…

" _Sorry, that probably sucked. But on a side note, I think your brain is a little obsessed."_

It was the speed of the response that shocked me. Not the content – that was basically what I'd been expecting. It was the speed… because it hit me that she typed that as quickly as humanly possible, assuming you didn't take any time whatsoever to think about what you wanted to say. Time wise, she seemed to go straight from picking up her phone to typing that out.

It suggested that she'd been planning on saying that to me since way before I actually brought up the subject. Which, knowing her incredibly detached, calculating, methodical nature, did seem entirely possible. She was the type to plan out what she wanted to say in every situation in advance if she got the opportunity, which she definitely did here.

I tapped at my screen, sending a simple, sarcastic, " _You think so, huh?"_

 _You think I'm obsessed? No shit._

Anyone who so much as listened to my song lyrics would figure out pretty quickly that my mind was absolutely fixated on that event, even after five years in the music industry. But who could blame me? That event – well, my response to it – was the single greatest fuck up I'd ever made in my entire life.

After all, when you cast aside your best friend right before realizing you're in love with them and you can't make up for your own actions, it tends to leave a lasting impression on you.

* * *

 **Author's Note**

 **So, how was that? Are you interested in reading the full version now? I'll probably have it out in a few days, so if you read this and want to read more of it, just follow me so you'll get an email when the thing goes live!**

 **Anyway, I don't have a lot to say. This is a short release, so I don't want to take up too much of everyone's time with author notes…**

 **See you next time!**


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